My (29M) friend (29M) landed himself in the ICU. Never had to face something like this. How to behave?

TLDR at bottom.

One of my best childhood friends, with whom I continue to stay close, landed himself in the ICU and is still there after 3 days. I’m flying out to see him and, hopefully, help out his family with errands while they take care of the important stuff.

To give some background. My friend has had troubles with drinking alcohol for a number of years, though it was mostly just overdrinking at social functions.

3 years ago, his mother passed away after a long battle with cancer, about a month before his wedding. It’s been kind of downhill since then and it appears that his wife is pretty powerless. I’ve made an effort to call him every single mother’s day since, just to see how he is doing. Not making it obvious about his (now) lack of mom, of course. I heard him and his wife were going through marital problems regarding his drinking, but don’t know anything more than that.

About a year ago, on a hunting trip no less, it became very obvious that it’s not just a simple “he had a bad habit of over drinking at parties” type thing. Last year, it was confirmed that he is a full on alcoholic. Noticed erratic behavior, sneaking of drinks, while about a quarter of a handle of shared (between 5 people for the weekend) vodka went missing. It got so bad that we just left him in the woods on his own. I don’t want to shoot next to a drunk guy, and we couldn’t convince him to go. All ended up ok at the time.

In the summer, I was told that he’s done drinking. His wife was watching after him, and every interaction, even when others were drinking, he was sober. Even for my birthday party. So all good here.

However, I was told now that he picked it up again a few weeks ago and has been going hard. This past weekend finally caught up to him and he now got a nonzero chance of dying.

Wife was out of town, and he drank himself into a stupor. By the following morning, he lost feeling to several extremeties, and some of his vital organs were beginning to shut down. Long story short, the paramedics found him and he’s hooked up to machines now.

Mutual MD friend spoke with his doctor (also past medical school professor) and the outlook isn’t great. If he survives in the short term, he’ll need a few new organs (that they don’t typically transplant into addicts) and may not walk for a very long time, if ever. Doctors are still confused as to what exactly transpired, and my friend arrived at hospital fully intoxicated before being sedated. He’s half woken up a few times to let everyone know he’s in terrible pain, but that’s about it.

About the only good thing about this whole situation is that he didn’t hurt anyone else (at least physically).

All this information is gathered from our MD friend, who has a direct line to his actual doctor. MD friend literally said to me, while I was trying to be optimistic, that “if you understood, like I understand, as to what is going on right now, you would be very scared”. Bastard shut me down hard.

Anyway, I’m gonna be back home to see them all this weekend. I’ve never been here before. Idk what to do. What to say to his dad? What to say to his wife? How to offer any momentary assistance? I just don’t know how to do this at all.

In any case, it’s going to be a long recovery. But if she pulls through decently, what can be done? Addiction is fucking awful.

TLDR: close friend is in serious health trouble related to alcohol. Going home to visit them all this weekend. Don’t even know what to say/do.

Submitted March 04, 2020 at 01:39PM by Magogins91 https://ift.tt/3auOaXj